[PRP] A sucker born every minute (Cor & N'seka)

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor had woken up that morning with a mind full of vivid, exciting dreams based loosely on the stories the bards had told the evening before. She thought she might like to be a bard someday. The only problem she could come up with about being a bard so far is that so many of their stories had to be told the same way every time. The words had to be the same, the cadence had to be the same. She'd noticed that a lot of the time even the gestures and facial expressions were the same. That part sounded boring, but she was sure any embellishments she added would be improvements.

"I should practice," she decided, speaking aloud because there was no one around to hear her and she was rather fond of the sound of her own voice.

In truth, Cor did not need to practice telling stories. She had created a very rich fantasy world to live in over the course of her life, and had told a sufficiency of lies attesting to its reality that storytelling was something which obviously came naturally to her. However, Cor was usually unaware of the fact that she was lying, and she rarely planned her lies out if she was, and so as far as she was concerned, she might need some practice.

"Now, to find an audience..."  

[Annchen]

N'Seka was in a bit of a dilemma at the moment. He had snuck off to go exploring, and while he hadn't moved alarmingly far from a grown lions point of view he had apparently moved past his own body's limits. He was out of breath, his paws and legs hurt and he was sitting alone trying to figure out how to get home without starting to bawl and make someone carry him there. Bawling was not something big boys did; his brothers had made that clear to him. And he didn't want his brother's to think he was a baby. And since he couldn't ask a grown up, or risk being humiliated, he had decided to rest for a while and see if his paws would start to cooperate soon.

He was still just a cub, but he had come to realise that his paws and joints did this now and then when he played for too long or walked too far. It was the beginning stages of disease, but to the dark cub it was becoming a normal part of everyday life.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor's eyes, brilliant copper, landed on the smaller form of a cub who looked like he had given up on something. It was a sad way to see a cub, even a cub of this pride, where there was more reason for them to be unhappy than cubs in most other prides had. Cor decided that she could tell the cub a story to cheer him up. That would be accomplishing two things at once, wouldn't it?

She deliberately picked her way through the tall grass, making for the cub. Her expression, formerly one of determination, softened into one of friendly greeting. She didn't know the cub personally, but she knew of his litter. Another litter abandoned by the borders of the pride's lands, presumably because their mother hadn't known about the plague. Well, it wasn't as though they had a way of posting signs and warnings about the pride's illness. They had scouts and guards who patrolled, but not enough to cover every inch of the borders.

"Hi there," she greeted the cub with the unexpected flash of pink on his tail. "I don't think I've seen you out here before. Were you exploring?"  

[Annchen]

N'Seka looked at the dark girl that had approached him, and smiled at her. Being small meant almost everyone and everything was bigger than him, and this girl was about the same size as his big brothers and sisters. However, she didn't look big enough to take him by the scruff and carry him home, so he felt it might be safe to tell the truth about his aching paws. She might stick around and talk to him, and then he could have fun and not be bored waiting.

"Yeah," he said, "I was exploring and then I got tired and my paws hurt a bit so now I'm waiting to be not-tired again. I'm going back home to mom when I'm not tired."  

[Princess_Feylin]

If Cor had realized that the problem was truly N'seka exhausting himself she actually would have had a ready solution, which would have been to call one of the grown-ups and have them carry him home. One of the things about her pride which she absolutely took for granted, having grown up there, was that most of the time people were willing to help a body out if they were having difficulties due to their illness, and they didn't seem to much resent being asked to do so. In the rogue lands and beyond, where it was every lion for themselves, Cor might not have fared so well, not realizing that this was atypical behavior, but fortunately it was unlikely she would ever venture beyond the pride's borders.

"Probably a good idea," Cor said, settling to the ground in a comfortable sprawl. "Er...who is your mum?"

The latter question was mostly because he didn't really look like anyone she knew. Oh, she knew there was a pink lioness in the pride, Mittere, but it didn't seem likely that Mittere had spawned any cubs while no one was looking. Cor knew there was a waiting period that involved gaining weight, and with the recent spate of pregnancies she had been particularly interested in watching for those bulging bellies that foretold babies.  

[Annchen]

It looked as if the girl was going to settle down here for a while and he was happy for the company. N'Seka figured if he did his best to answer she might stick around longer. He knew his mom had a name, but he rarely used it since it was easier to just say "mom" and be done with it. But "mom" was probably not an answer Cor was expecting and he did want her to stay. Some of his older siblings ran away from him if he was annoying, whatever that meant. From his limited experience annoying could be to ask a lot of questions, or pouncing on a tail, or just sitting there.

"Ye... Yeh... Jide," he finally settled on, and then added, "She's black and she's got eyes coloured a bit like yours. And a bit of white. Who's your mom?"

N'Seka didn't know many kitlings outside of his own family yet, but since there were LOTS of siblings to play with he didn't miss company. He wasn't sure if asking about mothers was what you did when you met others, but since she just had he figured it couldn't hurt.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor hadn't considered that he was likely to answer her with "mom." She had never really had a lioness that she called her mum, and so she tended to forget that others did. Her mum was always spoken of in the third person, and mostly it was Cor doing the talking. Her father didn't like to talk about it, and she didn't blame him, since it was probably a painful subject for him. Instead she had appointed herself the unofficial teller of that part of their story.

"Yejide?" She repeated the name just to make sure. She didn't know too much about Yejide except that she already had a litter of cubs a little younger than Cor was. She'd met a few of them, but not all. "It must be really nice to have so many brothers and sisters around. She has a lot of cubs, doesn't she?"

Actually, Cor had never heard of a lioness having so many cubs, particularly not so close together, but she didn't know too much about cub-having, not the specifics of it or anything like that. She was fairly certain, though, that it required both a male and a female lion, and she didn't think Yejide had a mate. Unless...her mate was a secret! For once she was distracted from an opportunity to talk about her parents' romantic tale and instead seized on this new piece of information.

"My mum's a princess in another pride," she said dismissively. "She doesn't live here. Is your dad like that? I mean, does he live here?"

She sensed that there could be a very good story in this if she could get it out of him. Not that it was all that important to get it out of N'Seka, whose name she still had not thought to ask. Cor could just fill in any necessary details on her own.  

[Annchen]

He nodded to confirm that Cor had got moms name right, and to agree that it was nice to have more siblings than he could count. And then she told him about her mom. N'Seka stared at her with wide-eyed awe. A princess? In another pride? There were other prides? His world was still a small one, and he was just starting to figure out how his own pride worked. That there might be others out there was a bit mind boggling to say the least. As far as he knew he had never met any outsiders, and he didn't remember or understand the circumstances regarding his birth.

"My dad?" he repeated back. "No I just have a mom and brothers and sisters."

The cubs in the pride didn't always have both a mother and a father due to the plague so he hadn't really made the connection that mom + dad = cubs. There were moms with cubs and dads with cubs and minders with lots of cubs. How was he supposed to know where babies came from?  

[Princess_Feylin]

Well! That was intriguing, Cor decided. The little one only had his mum and his siblings, and his mum had a whole lot of cubs. The two litters didn't look a great deal alike, but there was black on both of them, like Yejide's coat. It stood to reason that they were both hers, but the mystery was who their fathers were. That was important, if their fathers were from the pride. Too many cubs too closely related, that'd be bad. She'd just learned that a few days ago in her lessons.

"Oh, well. That happens sometimes." Her attitude toward incomplete parent pairings was very blase. And why not? Her own family consisted solely of her father and her. She didn't consider the minders as real substitutes for her mother, and she'd be glad when she was old enough to escape their care.

She licked at her forepaws, cleaning them carefully with her barbed tongue, making sure to get in between her toes. "My name's Cor Oxidat, by the way. What's yours?"  

[Annchen]

N'Seka followed her every move, but he resisted the urge to copy her and start cleaning his own paws. His brothers had taught him that cleaning was something that happened to you, not something you did voluntarily unless someone forced you to. Might feel better if he licked his paws, but they were already hurting less than they had before Cor got here. Better not break the little boy rule of staying dirty if at all possible even if it might feel good in certain circumstances.

"I'm N'Seka," he said, and he even remembered to add, "Nice to meet you Corox'dat! Your name is almost as long as my brother's name."

He might have gotten her name right if he hadn't tried to say it so fast, but his brothers name seemed absolutely impossible. He wouldn't be able to say 'Lawsonia Inermis' correctly for a good long time, and when he was finally grown enough to manage to wrap his tongue around it he would probably have resorted to whatever nickname seemed to fit best. Most of his brothers and sisters had names he could pronounce on a good day, but he usually managed to shorten them or mangle the pronunciation. As a cub he could get away with almost anything, and it was usually sufficient to just call "hey" or some other generic exclamation until the right cub responded. He had yet to meet someone that took offense when he couldn't get their name right.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor grinned a sharp-toothed grin. "It's nice to meet you, too, N'Seka. If my name's too long, you can always call me Cor. Most people do, and I don't mind at all."

She finished with her paws and began to work her way up her forelegs, occasionally interrupting the process to rub at her ears with her "wrist," just as she had seen adults doing. So far she had yet to see the point in that particular motion, but she performed it dutifully, certain that it was part of the standard cleaning procedure. She was ready to grow up - more than! - and she practiced what she could, when she could.

"What's your brother's name?" she asked. "And how many of you are there, anyway? I feel like there must be a lot of you."

She didn't know why she got this impression. She just did. Herself an only child, or close enough as to make no difference, she was somewhat fascinated by people who had large families, and frequently imagined what it would be like to be part of such a family. Not one of the existing ones, of course, but one of her own which was far more special. Probably her mother had been made to remarry by now, and so she probably did have half-siblings somewhere, but she only really thought of them in nebulous terms. Her father was really the central focus of her life at this point.  

[Annchen]

Cor, he could handle that. It was an easy name to remember so N'Seka grinned and nodded as she gave him permission to use it. She seemed awfully cleanly, and he gave one paw an experimental lick just to avoid feeling left out. Dusty. Nah, he'd stick to his policy of staying dirty until someone cleaned him up by force. He wasn't sure Cor would understand the connection between being a boy and being dirty, or the importance of this, so he didn't mention it.

"Um..." he said as she asked for his brother's name, but he had pretty much asked for it. He grimaced and then did his best to say his brother's name as fast as he possibly could, "Lawsonermis?"

It sort of sounded like his name. Almost. He wasn't about to try again at least so he dealt with her other question instead.

"Yeah," he said and nodded vigorously, "There are lots of us. At least eight. Or twenty."

Eight was a large number, right? Counting was not his strong side, so he tended to stick with "lots" or "a bunch" when he had to describe amounts. But he kind of, sort of, wanted to impress Cor a little so he said some numbers that sounded large. It was interesting to talk to a large cub that wasn't family and he was eager to make a good impression.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor's eyes widened with a combination of horror and amusement at N'Seka's pronunciation of his brother's name. She didn't know if he'd gotten it right or if he'd mangled it horribly. That wasn't the point. The point was more that someone had given their child such a horribly unpronounceable name in the first place. That just seemed cruel. Particularly in a family that was already large, and so probably prone to making mistakes with names.

"Twenty!" Cor exclaimed. She wasn't sure she'd believe an estimate that high, but even eight was a pretty big number. So often, she'd heard, cubs died before they were even born, or they died shortly after they were born. Having that many cubs in a family was nothing short of remarkable.

"I'd love to see that sometime," she said. She could imagine it easily enough, but in her mental image the den was literally crawling with cubs. They were walking up walls and dangling from the ceiling like bats and the ground seemed to seethe with moving bodies. In the middle of all this was the cubs' mother. It was a vivid mental image, but couldn't possibly be the way it really was. "Do you think if I walked you home, some of your family might be there?"  

[Annchen]

"Would you?" N'Seka said and his ears perked up, "I mean, yeah. I think some of them must be home now. There's usually someone home unless we're all going to the healers for checkups. And we're not doing that today because I'm here."

His older siblings brought friends home occasionally. One more cub in the den didn't really make much difference, so unless they all did at once it wasn't too bothersome for mom. It felt like a very grown up thing to do, to come home with some company, and it all sounded very exciting if you asked N'Seka. He had already got some rest sitting here, and the pure excitement made him forget all about achy paws.

"We can go now if you want to!"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor grinned and rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "Sure. My family's nothing like as big as yours is, so it'll be interesting to see a den with as many people as your family has."

Since she was mostly cared for by minders, like she was an orphan, Cor was actually used to going home to her father's den and finding it empty until one of the minders came to collect her and make her stay the night with all the other cubs whose parents were dead or absent. She didn't count the communal area as home, though. Home was the den she shared with her father, and when he wasn't there it was very empty. She didn't like to not be there at night, because that was when her dad always came home, if he was going to.

"That sounds good," Cor agreed. "But let's walk slowly. I'm feeling very old today. I'm at least five."

In truth, Cor was simply trying to make it easier on N'Seka, who she guessed was infected, and thus someone she would have to watch out for while he was with her. Cor wasn't infected, so it was her job, she was convinced, to make sure she took good care of those who were. That meant walking more slowly, or at least matching their pace, among other things, and occasionally lying so they wouldn't feel bad about it. Five years old seemed very old to Cor.